Conjunctions #39: The New Wave Fabulists

Conjunctions #39

by Bradford Morrow (Editor), Peter Straub (Editor)

Over the past three decades, the most adventurous practitioners of the literary arts of science fiction, fantasy, and horror have been transforming those genres into something all but unrecognizable. In Conjunctions’ game-changing New Wave Fabulists issue, guest editor Peter Straub has put together an anthology of innovative literary reinventions of traditional “pulp” forms. Contributors range from Jonathan Lethem to Neil Gaiman, from John Crowley to Kelly Link, from Elizabeth Hand to China Miéville. Gary K. Wolfe and John Clute contribute essays on the ongoing evolution of genre, while the brilliant cartoonist Gahan Wilson has created the cover and original frontispieces for each story.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Adult

436 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 15, 2002

About the author

Bradford Morrow has lived for the past thirty years in New York City and rural upstate New York, though he grew up in Colorado and lived and worked in a variety of places in between. While in his mid-teens, he traveled through rural Honduras as a member of the Amigos de las Americas program, serving as a medical volunteer in the summer of 1967. The following year he was awarded an American Field Service scholarship to finish his last year of high school as a foreign exchange student at a Liceo Scientifico in Cuneo, Italy. In 1973, he took time off from studying at the University of Colorado to live in Paris for a year. After doing graduate work on a Danforth Fellowship at Yale University, he moved to Santa Barbara, California, to work as a rare book dealer. In 1981 he relocated to New York City to the literary journal Conjunctions, which he founded with the poet Kenneth Rexroth, and to write novels. He and his two cats divide their time between NYC and upstate New York.

Visit his website at www.bradfordmorrow.com.

Reviews

[Holley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed most of the stories in this collection. If anything, I was disappointed by the lack of female authors included in the collection. Of twenty stories, only four were written by women. Less than a quarter of the book's contents. Surely, we can do better than this.

[Cookie M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty good anthology of weird fiction. I didn't read the essay, which discussed the nature of the genre. I was not feeling particularly academic.

[Frank McGirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a strong collection. Standouts for me were John Crowley "The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines", Peter Straub's "Little Red's Tango", China Mieville's "Familiar", Andy Duncan's "The Big Rock Candy Mountain", Gene Wolfe's excerpt from Knight (I need to read more Gene Wolfe), and Karen Joy Fowler's "The Further Adventures of teh Invisible Man".

The two non-fiction essays at the end made me ever so glad that I did not pursue literary criticism in grad school. Ugh, what crap.

[Eli C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of these stories were complete duds, but others... others were glorious. In these stories, magic sits right on the outskirts of people's lives. And that's hard to do without making people seem like they are insane or losing the track of the story because "oh, that random thing was actually not so random!"

[Michael Norwitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

An anthology of literary short stories which skirt at the boundaries of fantasy or horror, capped off with a pair of short articles about the history of the genres. All are well-written, although my favorite in the book is the penultimate one by Elizabeth Hand.

Gahan Wilson provides some sparsely drawn illustrations to accompany each story.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best of these are wonderful. The least of them? Well, as Mr. Gaiman says near the end of his:

"It was a story," said December. "I'll say that for it."

[mayfly wake]

Here are the stories I've read so far:

The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines, by John Crowley: Going into this collection I expected immediate super-strangeness, but this was so subtle you might not even notice the weird if you weren't on the lookout for it. It moved a little slowly for my taste but I like the idea of planting a seed of doubt in realistic fiction, the way something kind of "off" in your day-to-day life might haunt you for years. Definitely some great character development, but all in all not really my speed.

Lull, by Kelly Link: This was more my style...the kind of nested, complex, mindfuck of a story that you have to read multiple times to even figure out the mechanics of the crazy universe you're in. Just enough of an emotional component to drive home how bizarre things are in this reality. Some of the plot was really reminiscent of a certain Red Dwarf episode, but there was definitely enough beyond that to make it one of the most creative things I've read lately. It really made the most of the short story format. Awesome on a scale of one to awesome.

Entertaining Angels Unawares, by M. John Harrison: Set in England, so it immediately hit a soft spot in my heart. A couple characters I felt like I knew personally by the end and certain vivid details that I had to reread just for the mental images and shivers up my spine. Like the first story, no outright surreal or fantastic elements, but it fit right in in a setting that was already eerie enough, characters flirting with madness...Some stories make me uncomfortable because they hit too close to home. Good.

Little Red's Tango, by Peter Straub: I LOVED THIS STORY. I haven't really read anything that uses deification and scripture about a "normal guy" from our time period but it's an idea I've thought about before. Catholicism at an early age tinges everything forever, and this really hit the spot. I won't give too much away, but the "Beatitudes" nearly brought me to tears. Hey! Jazz! Miracles! Squalor! This is my fave so far.

The Wisdom of the Skin by James Morrow:
Sex, the progression of art and academia, "cyberneurology", and a clone paradox all tenderly woven into a strange love story. Good stuff.

[Paul Crittenden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some great stories here. Now is not the time and this is not the place to get into a whole essay on "New Wave Fabulists" vs. "Slipstream" vs. "New Weird" vs. whatever. Suffice to say that the style of writing represented by the stories in Conjunctions 39 is my favorite style currently. These stories are subtle and smart, with feet firmly planted in both the genre stream as well as in the "main"stream. If you're looking for something different, something new, something that will wake you up, this may be what you're looking for. This is postmodern literature for folks who hate postmodernism. It's genre fiction for people who hate elves and ray guns. There is something in this collection for everybody. My personal favorites are Paul Park's spooky-as-hell "Abduction," Andy Duncan's fun yet cautionary "Big Rock Candy Mountain," and Kelly Link's devilish "Lull."

[Brandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been plugging away at this one for a while now, because the stories in here are just plain long. I really like Poe's definition of the short story--something you can read in one sitting--and a lot of what's here just doesn't qualify. That said, most of what's here is very good (the contributors list is a veritable Who's Who of my bookcases), so on balance, worth a read. But don't expect it to fly by.

[Danielle McNamara]

Neil Gaiman has a story in this and I had a friend at Bard College (who's annual book this is) and he sent me a copy because he knew how much I loved Neil. I have yet to read anything other than Neil's story.

[Ken Ficara]

Conjunctions: 39, The New Wave Fabulists by Peter Straub (2002)

[Periwinkle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very, very good collection of modern fantasy and 'slip-stream' horror writers.

[matthew]

some really brilliant stuff in here.